Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Blizzcon Cosplay!

Well, Blizzcon 2009 was absolutely amazing. It's completely different from an anime con, and was twice as big as the biggest con I've been to!

I'm just going to focus on cosplay in this particular post, though as you might imagine, I have a lot to say about the rest of the con, as well. Going there was an absolute dream.

I have to admit, it was very difficult seeing all of the amazing costumes, because as I've mentioned many times before, I want to do WoW cosplay very badly. However, I had several very nice conversations with some of the people in the amazing costumes, so I picked up some good tips for when I start on mine! I mostly asked about armour making, as I've heard of so many ways to do it. Wonderflex was involved on everyone I spoke to (except one person, whose friends made his armour out of REAL LEATHER. Crap.), as I assumed, but the rest was varied.

The priest (first photo) used Model Magic on top of his armor, much to my noticeable surprise. I have heard of people making things with it, but it has some issues... it shrinks a lot, for one, and can be dented during various stages. He wasn't surprised at me being skeptical, so he went on to explain that it works very well and is nice and lightweight, you just have to remember to account for the shrinking when making the pieces. I'm now confident that if I do experiments to see how much it shrinks in different situations, I could form some pretty intricate pieces with it.

A girl dressed as a... which doctor? Shaman? From Diablo 3 told me that most of her stuff was made out of Sculpey, which surprised me even more than the Model Magic guy. Almost as if reading my mind, she said that it of course is very fragile, and she has to be extremely careful not to break it. She also used the much talked about Wonderflex/Friendly Plastic combo. She also used Bondo for a few things, and I asked her how easy it was to work with. She said don't use it on things that bend, which I pretty much figured. She also had a very cool system of LED lights embedded into cast resin jewels all over her armor. She explained that all of the wires were hidden in the cloth, and they were all powered by D batteries disguised in a scroll case! That was a great idea. I regret not taking a photo of her, but she was in the costume contest, so I'm sure there are many photos of her on the internet.

Kael'thas (second photo) is the guy who was wearing a costume made by two friends; one did the armor, the other the sewing. The armor was all hand-tooled leather, and was very impressive. Leather working is an in-game skill I have that I've always wanted to learn to do in real life. Hopefully some day I will. Anyway, he was very nice, and enjoyed doing Kael'thas's voice, which was fun.

I didn't get to talk to the Draenei Shaman (third photo) about his armor, but I thought it looked very cool. The LEDs gave a nice effect because the whole con was so dark. I wasn't so sure about the scale of his mace, but everything looked really great. You could tell he spent a great deal of time on it. I was also just happy to see a draenei male! More beard tentacles next time, man. Beard tentacles.

The costume contest was great fun to watch. I didn't have good seats, so I have no photos from it. It should be easy to find on the internet. The girl who won had a very intricate and amazing costume and, almost as importantly, was in character all the time! I saw her several times throughout the con, including on stage, and she was always acting her part. Congrats to her for all of her efforts.

Overall, there weren't many people walking around on the floor in costume, and I could see why. Most of the costumes were big and bulky, and the convention was completely packed and difficult enough to navigate in normal clothes. But... I'm going to try to do it anyway! Here's hoping I can get tickets next year.